Fattening Up Was Easy: Damon

Feud alert?

(NEWSER) - Matt Damon seems so nice, and yet the beloved actor finds himself smack dab in the middle of a possible (and relatively polite) Hollywood feud. And Damon himself started it, when he discussed his three Bourne films with GQ . The writer, Tony Gilroy, was given a deal for the third film requiring just one draft—and the result was not impressive. "It's really the studio’s fault for putting themselves in that position," Damon says. "I don't blame Tony for taking a boatload of money and handing in what he handed in. It’s just that it was unreadable." More»

Sopranos writer to pen script

(NEWSER) - The Whitey Bulger story begs for the cinematic treatment—and it’s getting just that, courtesy of two guys who know a thing or two about Boston. Ben Affleck will direct Matt Damon as Bulger in the Warner Bros. release, with a script by Sopranos writer/producer Terence Winter. “I don't think it's been announced yet that we're doing it,” Damon tells GQ . “But the sooner it's announced the better, just because everyone else will back off. I’m really excited about it." More»

Let's just say he doesn't agree with Reason.tv

(NEWSER) - Matt Damon is being heaped with Internet love after a video from the weekend's Save Our Schools march went viral. Damon, interviewed by the libertarian Reason.tv, took issue with the reporter's view that "job insecurity" is what causes him to work hard as an actor—and that more job insecurity could motivate teachers to work hard, too. Watch his smackdown in the gallery, and make sure to stick around til the end for arguably the best line, which he hurls at the cameraman. (When you're done, click to watch fellow actor Mila Kunis engage in her own reporter smackdown —in Russian.) More»

One person's 'enthralling' is another person's boring

(NEWSER) - Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon … what’s not to like about Hereafter? But not all the critics are overly impressed with this spiritual film that touches on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 London subway bombings:

• “The mostly mesmerizing but finally flawed film” mostly “plays like a smart and stylish thriller,” writes Michael O'Sullivan in the Washington Post . But the promise of three separate and “artfully-woven” plotlines coming together for “a collision—or at least a fusion,” is never realized. “The big payoff fizzles.”
• Mick LaSalle begs to differ: This is one of Eastwood’s best, he writes in the San Francisco Chronicle . “Every shot communicates something precise, whether it's plot detail or a thought or emotion.” The result is a “sympathetic and all-encompassing understanding of the pain and grandeur of life on earth.”

Movies disappoint, but rarely go the way of Ishtar

(NEWSER) - It's rare these days to see a big-studio movie truly bomb, and that's a shame, laments Tom Shone of Slate . Sure, we get our share of misfires like Jonah Hex or The A-Team , but few reach the depths of those glorious financial busts of yesteryear like Ishtar, Waterworld, and Cutthroat Island—"the swashbuckler that derailed the careers of Renny Harlin, Geena Davis, and Matthew Modine—and the last film to actually force a movie studio to close, Heaven's Gate-style." More»